Living Well (During These Times)

It’s a Time to Learn, Not Return!!

Wow so we have been in Quarantine for over a month!!

Congratulate the people around you, you are not dead, you may have wanted to kill them, but we are all still here, and that is something to congratulate ourselves in.

But have you been “Living Well?”

And that is what this whole series is about living well during these uncertain times.

And let’s be honest Louisiana these are uncertain times for us as we are one of the worst affected in the country. And so, there is an uncertainty about it. A not knowing. A what if? A what now? And if we are honest not just the right now but the six months from now and the years from now that will be affected.

And so, today’s message…

It’s A Time to Learn, Not Return!!

So, I will pick on myself. Before Quarantine…the day after Christmas to be exact I decided to start working out again. We were on vacation. And I had enough. So I went after it. Swimming. Walking. Hiking. We get back and start the patterns of school again and I am up at 5:30 to work out and I stick to it. In fact they literally had to shut down the gym before I quit going!!

I was ALL IN!! In everything. Goals. Setting up Dreams for the Future.

And this.

Unexpected.

All of sudden from now where.

And my tendency has been to RETURN.

Return to what I used to be…pressure makes that happen right and this is an incredible amount of pressure and unexpected occurrences and the temptation will be to return to what God has rescued you from. Pressure does that…

We start to think that we had it better with that bad relationship, addiction, disconnection, laziness, generational patterns…

And this is common

Throughout Biblical History as well, we think it is easier to return than learn

But learn is the very thing that God has intended for us to do.

Let’s read.

Exodus 1:8-14

8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. (now this is really the story of the last half of Genesis…Joseph, his brothers, famine, king, but this king did not remember Joseph) 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Genesis 15:13 “Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.”

400 years of slavery.

400 years of ruthless work and slavery

And God saved them.

He rescued them miraculously and sent them to the Promised Land.

But pressure came because pressure always comes.

pres·sure

continuous physical force exerted on or against an object by something in contact with it.

Pressure comes in quarantine.

Pressure comes in the wilderness experiences of our lives.

Death (Pressure), Depression (Pressure), Loss of a Job (Pressure), Loss of a Relationship (Pressure), Change in our Circumstances (Pressure)

PRESSURE

Seventy-five days into the wilderness, the Israelites felt PRESSURE

Though they were prepared, they had great flocks and herds, balls of unleavened bread dough, and probably food from the Egyptians when they were leaving, they had provisions, just not the ones they wanted…and this is where we pick up the story.

Exodus 16:1-3

16 They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to

them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

They were so hungry they were dreaming of the “good ole days.” of slavery in Egypt when the supposedly had full stomachs. But this happens again and again and again….Actually 14 times.

Even Nehemiah 9:21 points out that though they wandered for 40 years they lacked nothing

Exodus 5:1-22 (Complained that Moses made it harder for them against Pharoh) Exodus 14:11-12 (told Moses to leave them alone) Exodus 15:22 (Complained about Bitter Water) Exodus 17”1-4 (complained about being thirsty) Exodus 32:28 (Now they Leave the Lord and worship a calf) Numbers 11 (A mixed Multitude Complain and Moses want to Die and God sends a Plague) Numbers 12:1-12 (Aaron and Moses Sister Complains about Moses Leadership) Numbers 14:10 (People complain again and again and want to Kill Moses) Numbers 16 (The key leaders rebel against Moses) Number 16 (Complain against Moses and accuse him of killing God’s people) Number 20 (The people complain and Moses gets angry)

The tendency is to return…

BECAUSE NO ONE LIKE PRESSURE

Would be that we were back in Egypt…you remember the good forgetting how utter destructive it is in your life. You can’t go back to the very thing that God has set you free from.

Pressure is Meant to Perfect You

We are not to run from wilderness experiences, rather we let the pressure perfect us.

It’s like a diamond, perfected by the pressure, a pearl, perfected by the pressure

So maybe God freed you from overwhelming anger before quarantine,

It’s a time to learn, memorize Ephesians 4:29, and not return.

Maybe God has set you free from laziness before quarantine,

it’s a time to learn get up and do something and not return.

Perhaps God has freed you from and addictions (porn, alcohol, drugs, social media)

it’s a time to learn, not return.

Or maybe God has healed your marriage or friendships,

it’s time to be like Christ who was selfless, learn, and not return.

And what the enemy is so good at is getting us to return to something that was never any good for us any ways…The very thing that God has freed us from, is the very thing that the enemy uses as a trap. And it is just that…

A trap.

There is no way that the wilderness with God supplying food and water was worse than Egypt.

But it a trap that the enemy sets up, that we would run to the very thing that God has set us free from.

You know that alcohol destroyed your life, but you run back to it because it comforts you.

You know that anger destroyed your relationships, but you run back to it because in the moment it makes you feel good.

You know that laziness has destroyed God’s plans and purposes for your life, but you run back to it because it feels good there.

You know that you generational patterns passed down to are not like Christ, but you revert back to them because that pattern is engraved into who you were.

I have to think that the Israelites knew deep down that Egypt was not better, but they wanted to run back to it because it was comfortable.

It was a trap. Why?

Because.. The promise land was on the other side.

The promise land is on the other side…and the last thing the enemy wants is for you to make it there. How many people have I seen called of God with a strong anointing on their lives walking in the promised of God then come pressure…

A death

A loss

An unexpected turn of events

And they return

But this is what we must not do

We must stand and fight

We must learn and not return because for us too the promise land is on the other side.

We can’t see it, but it is there.

It was there for the Israelites, and it is there for us.